Orange Dreams
by Ophium
Summary: Ramblings of an old teacher, after she is forced out of the quietness of her house in Jefferson, Missouri on a false fire alarm. Featuring weeDean. Set in season 1 ‘Devil’s trap’. Complete.


Orange dreams

Every child is special, every child is a gift, every child deserves your full attention, every child teaches you something amazing and new. I should know, I used to teach them.

Some, however, just stick out, like sore thumbs in a sea of fingers. And they stick with you forever.

There was nothing special about the kid. He didn't smell (and lord knows not all of the first graders were all that attuned with their inner bladders in all the excitement of the first day at school), he wasn't chubbier than most, he wasn't shorter, taller, brighter, whinier or more talkative than the others. If anything, he was a very silent kid. Extremely silent kid.

Which made me pay more attention to him, because at six, quieter was not wiser. At six, a quiet child usually spelled trouble.

I looked at his file more than once, searching for clues. The beginning-of-the-year skim through that I'd given all of the new students files' didn't tell me much about him. The second read through proved to be even less enlightening.

Six years old, turning seven in just a couple of months, family newly arrived in town, no records of pre-school attendance. And that was pretty much it.

At such a tender age, it wasn't easy being the new kid in class, especially when most of the remaining students already knew each other from kindergarten. I kept an eye on him, trying to decide if the silence was a product of shyness or something more troubling at home. I tried not to judge or form any bigotry ideas about his family, but given the home address that had been listed in his file (the motel just outside of town that wasn't favored with the best of reputations), it was hard to imagine this kid's life being all that healthy and stable.

He didn't play much with the other kids in recess, seemingly content to stay inside when the bell rang and sit in his chair, coloring his color-books and painting stuff.

I remember he loved orange. For some reason, most of his drawings were filled with that color, from top to bottom, deep, rich orange, seeming to burn right off the page. I tried asking him once what did his drawings mean, because honestly, they looked kind of abstract to me. He looked at me, green eyes that took almost half of his tiny face and that looked far too old for a child so young and whispered 'home'.

I didn't really understand what he meant by that, but I never really asked again. The way he answered me that one time was... I felt a chill, the certain feeling that there was more to it than just that simply answer, but I cowardly walk away, convincing myself that he probably just meant that home was in a very sunny place and nothing more.

He was a bright kid, picking up numbers and alphabet like they were pieces of puzzles to which he already knew the ending, but for some reason, he hated story telling. Despise it even, with a vehemence that little kids usually reserved for math and broccoli.

He couldn't stand to be still and listen to stories that had the other kids's eyes glazed over with glee, hearing about princes and princess and evil witches and nasty monsters and happy, happy endings.

If I didn't know better, I would say that it was anger I often saw in his expressive eyes, when I forced him to sit put and listen anyway. And if I allowed myself to admit as much, I would say that, on occasion, there were tears in there too.

But children need a little fantasy and story telling in their lives, right?

Not him though.

Two weeks in, I had the scare of my life. Truly, in thirty years of career I had more than my fair share of kids breaking arms, breaking legs and noses and heads during recess and even in class. One memorable time I even had one student stick an eraser up the nose of another one. But nothing compared to the sixty minutes we spent searching for one missing girl, Susie, from the kindergarten class.

You see, when the parents drop their kids at school, they trust us with more than the safekeeping of their child's minds. They trust us with their lives.

And every single one of the teachers in that school saw as his or hers responsibility to deliver every child back at the end of the day, safe and sound.

We had already called in the police when Dean found Susie. He was supposed to be in my classroom, along with all the others, while the teachers search the grounds of the school. Frank, one of our school aids, was supposed to be keeping an eye on them.

But still Dean got out; still he managed to figure that Susie had hidden herself inside a tiny cupboard in the kindergartens classroom, refusing to get out because her parents were, apparently, moving to another town and she figured that staying hidden at school was the perfect way to force them to stick around too.

I don't know how he knew where to look, I don't even know what he said to her to convince her to come out, but I know that she was smiling so sweetly when she did and we were all so relieved to see her safe that I didn't even had the courage to punish Dean properly for getting out without permission.

I did wanted to tell his parents about what Dean had done, because it had truly surprised me the way he'd handled a younger child and the altruistic care that he'd shown towards another, and parents should be made aware not only of their children's shortcomings, but also of their values. Six year olds are precious little things, but selfishness is certainly not one of their most common threads.

The man who usually came to pick Dean up was big and gruff, like a barely tamed grizzly bear and yet... that was the only time I saw that kid smile. Not just smile, but lighten up like a ray of sunshine, in a way that made me sad for not once, not ever one time, see that smile aimed at me.

Sometimes the grizzly bear had a toddler with him, sometimes not. Not once did I saw the mother and, although I had my suspicions that it was just the father and the two kids, his file said nothing on the matter and I couldn't bring myself to ask my student. I would've asked the father, but he never really stuck around long enough to tell me the time of day, much less details about his family's structure.

One day I asked all the kids to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up. It was a standard question, we all asked that, we all enjoyed watching the progression of their answers as they grew older.

Though most kids that age would say lots of things that they would never become ('I want to be a water cooler', one once told me; or 'I want to be a lamppost'... though, that one grew up to be a gaffer in some big company in Hollywood, so I guess he wasn't that far off...), still, sometimes, you get a glimpse of these kids's futures and know that their childhood dreams will come true. When Dean shyly said that he wanted to be a fireman, I got one of those rare glimpses.

I could see that quiet kid becoming a fireman... or a policeman, or even a doctor. Something protective, some profession that allowed him to take care of others. He seemed to thrive on that.

Still, when I collected their drawings at the end of the day, Dean had not drawn a fireman like I expected him to. He drew the same tongues in orange, fire consuming his imagination like it always did, only this time there were three little stick figures standing in one corner. Watching. Guarding.

He never finished the year, his father saying something about a job relocation, puling him out before I could say 'hey!' or Dean could hide himself in a cupboard like little Susie had done. He was my student for six months, twenty years ago... and I still remember him.

That nice fireman today kind of reminded me of him. It was the eyes, I think. The same odd shade of green, the same ageless depth inside them, impossible to go unnoticed even with all the gear covering the rest of his face.

In the end, there was no fire at all, but in the rush of going outside when the fire alarm sounded, galloping all those steps in my age, I could've ended the day with a broken hip just because some young punk thought it was funny to play with the alarm.

I tripped on the blasted stairs and would've taken a nasty fall if that nice fireman hadn't grabbed my arm. 'Careful ma'm' he said in a warm, slightly southern accent. 'No need to rush down the stairs, everything is under control now,' he let me know, stepping aside to make sure that I kept on descending the stairs, while he raced up to catch up with his tall companion.

How he could possibly know that even before he searched the rest of the apartments in the Sunrise complex, I had no idea. But he was right, never the less.

Like I said, some kids just stick out, like sore thumbs. And young, quiet Dean... might be just the ramblings of a crazy old teacher, but something tells me that, like that nice fireman, he is out there, saving people from the flames.

The end.


End file.
